109 comments:

The bailout plan seems to actually be Obama's reparations in disguise.

He's talking about building new schools in areas where there is industrial noise from trains, and where the science rooms are not up to snuff.

It's his reparations plan that he's been outlining for years in journals like Ebony, only now he's trying to argue that this is what the bailout REQUIRES. He's a very cynical guy who must think Americans are profoundly stupid not to see that this is in fact a massive spending bill for his pet projects, not any kind of bailout at all.

When it became apparant that Obama and his socialistic anti-business policies would be the candidate the market tumbled. Prudent investors getting the Hell out of Dodge.

Now with the reality of this incredibly stupid, wasteful, pork laden, politically motivated give away as favors to those who elected Obama....the reality has sunk in and expect the market to continue to go down down down.

Hoosier - Yes, what we really needed to do was borrow that 1 trillion from China and give it as tax cuts for the Rich so they could invest it in China or move their factories there or to India.For we all know that Bush and supply-side tax cutting focusing on the wealthy along with open borders and easy credit had made America the prosperous, jobs creating engine where house value never went down..Then Obama came along. And lets not forget the Democrats who were a minority in Congress from 1994-2006 cleverly orchestrating the economic catastrophe over the majority in Congress then "I'll never veto a single spending bill!" Bush's strenuous objections.

Of course Pelosi is a wreckless idiot on a George Bush scale, or a Denny "Porkmeister" Hastert level. But she wouldn't be in a position to screw up if Republicans hadn't royally screwed up their decade-long Mandate beforehand.

And..Can you imagine John McCain as President now?

"My friends, my friends! A lot is happening, most I don't understand, but I'll fight for you! When you're locked in a 4X4 cell you eventually learn the difference between the slop and toilet buckets..and that lesson guided me both to beer heiresses and friendly TV producers. I may not have a clue..in fact I oppose what I said yesterday from the core of my deep character and acute conscience and next we will......Uh excuse me..the next page of what I have to say isn't up on Teleprompter..be sure when it comes up, I'll tell you more of what I am for and against. Meanwhile, back at the Hanoi Hilton...where I fought.."

I'm not sure what your point is. The GOP spent like drunken sailors? That's yesterday's news. So now that we established that the GOP lacked fiscal conservatism, we can use that as an excuse for Democrats to do the same?

Funny but the 'he did it too!' excuse didn't work for me back in 2nd grade either.

Likely Analysts read the CBO analysis of the Stimulus package where it said that the random billions in spending would ultimately hurt the economy.

and signals from Treasury bond buyers that they dont have bottomless pockets to spend on devaluating bonds, that look more and more worthless.

Combine that with the new plan that didn't talk about free money to banks, and fitness tests, and maybe wall street decided that the gravy train was drying up where they were concerned and the problems we not fixed yet.

What would have helped Wall Street was tax rate cuts on businesses or on capital gains, those would instantly raise the market. From their perspective borrowing money to increase the EITC today, will ultimately result in a tighter credit market and higher taxes on folks who ultimately pay taxes (or their grandkids)

When it became apparant that Obama and his socialistic anti-business policies would be the candidate the market tumbled. Prudent investors getting the Hell out of Dodge.

Well exactly. The Four Horsemen of a Democratic Economic Apocalypse-

Taxation, Litigation, Unionization, and Regulation.

Add to that though-they've figured out who's going to PAY for Obama's historic trillion dollar bill-

Industry.

They can read Obama's bill and figure out that half of it goes to improve buildings and build buildings in Washington DC and to fill it with more bureaucrats to redistribute the "wealth" how they the appointed ones see fit.

How many fiefdoms, czars, and overlapping experts has he added already-in just two weeks?

I know the stimulus package is just full of these sorts of nuggets, but I got a kick out of saying that the Senate stimulus bill included $198,000,000 for Philippino Veterans of WWII. Not going to generate a bunch of US jobs out of money sent to Manila are we?

Gosh blinkety! I sure could have done better at this than Obama or McCain...but the Religious Right said I was totally wrong because I lacked purity on a lifetime of being a Right to Lifer. That, and the Mormons that still deliver 3 Western states and make them competitive in 3 others are Godless heretics..that love a twisted version of Jesus.Oh well...But darn, it makes me mad!

6 nameless high-ranking Generals in the bowels of the Pentagon:

General 1 - "Both Parties are failing. For the security of the Nation and the lives of its citizens, we need to establish coup criteria where we would step in and end Rule by Lawyers."General 2 - "Dow at 5,000."General 3 - "Maybe that plus 16% unemployment and the collapse of the dollar as the Chinese and Russians and Saudi creditors make a play to cripple us."General 4 - "Dow at 5,000, plus half the hospitals closing, and mass riots would be my threshold."General 1 - "So we wait to save the Constitution like Lincoln did - by fixing it and ignoring certain parts...Should we wait on drafting arrest lists of the likes of Madoff, Chris Dodd, Pelosi, Dick Fuld, Denny Hastert, Barney Frank?"General 3 - "I'd wait on those lists. Just the DC-insider lawyers number in the 10s of thousands. Let alone the Wall Street people that created the poison paper. Waste of time to work on lists if we aren't sure we may have to act.."General 6 - "Cheney and others counsel patience. Patience! Let's see how Obama does, 1st.."General 1 to General 5 "Colin, you've been pretty quiet"General 5 - "Just listening. Wait and see. I think we will all know when we must rescue the nation, it will be a sum of factors. Not just a metric like the Dow at 5,000. But everybody seeing unfettered capitalism failed, Bush failed, Obama failed, and civilian government failed..and no one wanting communism. Just people that can step in and fix things and get the country right again. Ending legal paralysis and corrupt legislators wrecking the country for special interests..Gentlemen, we are not 'there', quite yet."

Obama speaks. Geithner speaks. DJIA drops 330 points. DJIA futures for tomorrow are down 380 points. Gold prices expected to rise to $1000 per ounce based on April futures contracts.

It is one thing to fool the voters into believing that "stimulus" included government confiscation of every citizen's private medical records, wetland restoration, etc., and quite another thing to convince the market.

Barack Obama was nominated on August 27, 2008. On that day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,502.51. As of the moment I am composing this post the DJIA is 7940.41, a 31% drop in less than 6 months.

The market is rational, and it has not bought into hopey changey, not has it bought into the silly notion that a massive expansion of government can stimulate the economy.

Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't learned their lesson: "we have to do something" is the thinking that gave us Smoot-Hawley. Sometimes, the politician's obsession with doing something is precisely what plunges a crisis into a catastrophe.

Barack Obama was nominated on August 27, 2008. On that day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,502.51. As of the moment I am composing this post the DJIA is 7940.41, a 31% drop in less than 6 months.

Worse, I think. It really didn't start to drop like a rock until essentially the day that Obama pulled ahead of McCain during the banking crisis where Obama came across as studied and cool, and McCain tried to force a solution.

Yes, maybe it dropped because of the banks, but realistically, it didn't really start dropping until after the McCain's fiasco a short time later.

And, if you really don't believe that Obama and his fecklessness has some effect on the markets, just look at the day he was inaugurated and a couple days after that.

This isn't the stimulus package idiots. This is the "rest of the bailout money" for the banks. Duhhh.

After Mr. Bush and Mr. Paulson simply gave away the first $350 billion without so much as a fairtheewell, now there are conditions. Of course Wall Street and the stock market doesn't like conditions. Tough.

When was the last time that Wall Street and the Market behaved in accordance with the real world we have to live in.

Of course we have the "hey don't look back that's history" crowd...gotta love them....unfortunately the mailman has now brought "history's bills" and they are due. Should we forward them to Mr. Bush?

Just another example of his irresponsibility and pushing off the mess for someone else to clean up.

This morning the Heritage Foundation in conjunction with the Club for Growth, held a conference on the bailout. Here's what one of the speakers, CATO Economist Arnold Kling, had to say about the Democrat's economic plans:

“I think about the stimulus as an economist but I feel it as a father. Barack Obama is destroying my daughters future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs. That’s how I feel, now back to how I think.”

"The Drill SGT said... I know the stimulus package is just full of these sorts of nuggets, but I got a kick out of saying that the Senate stimulus bill included $198,000,000 for Philippino Veterans of WWII. Not going to generate a bunch of US jobs out of money sent to Manila are we?"

Actually, a good number of Filipino veterans live in the States.

I don't know how the money is ultimately to be doled out, but the formula proposed last year was to give $15,000 to ones who were US citizens, and $9,000 to the non-citizen Pinoys.

I don't know why they stuck this in the stimulus bill, and I'm sort of aggravated that they lumped it in. We need to remember that the money for this was set aside last year in its own separate act, and going back further, the whole idea of providing the promised compensation to veteran Filipinos has been proposed many times in the past, certainly well before Obama came onto the national stage. Bickering amongst the Congressional members (big surprise) kept it from being distributed last year, but my point was that the Filipino War Veterans Equity Bill was never brought into being with the intent of making it part of the stimulus package. It predates the package by a good margin.

It's stupid to lump in dough that was already set aside and promised in another context within this package. The cynic in me wonders if it's packaged that way deliberately to get the Fil-Am crowd to approve of the overall proposal. That sort of rolling up seems offensive to me. I hate politicking like that. Since the compensation is judged by last year's congress to be necessary, why turn the delivery of it into an insult by making it some rider on a larger package, instead of giving it its own time and space?

I'm in favor of the act on it's own, but I'm steamed that Washington thought of it so highly they attached it to something else to improve palatability of that other package. It deserves it's own time and space, not some lumping in with the rest of Pelosi et. al.'s stuff.

I don't believe that his religion was the sticking point on him not getting the nomination. If everyone (or anyone) had seen the financial collapse coming he might have made it, but as it *was* then, looking forward, he just wasn't a very conservative candidate. He didn't excite anyone. I mean... when I saw pictures of the Republican candidates I could name them all easily, except for that generically handsome fellow who didn't really look like anyone. That's a *problem* when someone is trying to get elected. I mean... figure that I was paying attention, maybe not as closely as some but undoubtedly more than most.

The most interesting thing about Romney *was* that he was a Mormon. If it wasn't for *that*, who'd have even known who he was?

"Earlier today I glanced at an Althouse thread - I’m sorry I can’t remember which - and someone cleverly quoted from the musical Evita:

“And the money kept rolling in from every sideEva’s pretty hands reached out and they reached wideNow you may feel it should have been a voluntary causeBut that’s not the point my friends”“When the money keeps rolling out you don’t keep booksYou can tell you’ve done well by the happy grateful looksAccountants only slow things down, figures get in the wayNever been a [President] loved as much as [Barack Obama]”

No one knows if this will stop the bank bleeding or not. The banks still clutch to their credit derivatives, refusing to believe that the tranches they conspired with S&P or Moody's to rate AAA, are actually worthless.

Will all the subprime borrowers and alt-A borrowers walk away from their homes and mortgages? Only God knows. But massive unemployment will only increase the number of defaults.

Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't learned their lesson: "we have to do something" is the thinking that gave us Smoot-Hawley

The lesson for Democrats is "Don't trust Republican solutions to economic crises;" Smoot and Hawley both being Republicans.

Change you can believe in - the destruction of the US economy. What 18 muslims in commercial aircraft couldn't do, one lone whacko, aided by his mentally challenged sidekicks, can accomplish with the stroke of a pen.

All of you who knew this would happen had short positions, or have been out of the market since Labor Day, right?

I've been stuffing cash in socks and under mattresses since November 2006. But I work in affordable housing development, so I knew what was eventually coming for the last five years. The last midterm election sealed it, though.

The election of Obama and a stronger Democratic congress in the aftermath of an unsuccessful Republican administration doesn't logically flow into the need to accept the Democrats' financial plans whole and without scrutiny.

You're right in this sense. If Bush criticizes these plans, I am not interested in what he says. Cheney can shut up too.

But that doesn't mean you get to disenfranchise ALL critics of Obama/Pelosi/Reid/Geithner. Obama was elected president. He wasn't elected infallible.

Treasury Chief Aims to Restore ‘Lost Faith’ in Bailout... Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner called for more direct capital injections, a new program to buy troubled assets...

Well, I've kept the faith...instead of taking my garb-...oops, I mean troubled assets...out to the curb each week, I've been storing them in my basement, waiting for a buyout and a yummy "capital injection." But now they're starting to smell--c'mon Timmy, time to step up.

Well now we know that all it takes to be "indispensable" enough to get away with tax fraud is being a gibbering idiot.

Clearly this man has not a CLUE what to do; and neither does the man who appointed him. I'll buy the notion that Geithner at least WANTS to figure out a way to fix the economy. Barry's goal, I fear, is to break the back of the economy so government takeover is "necessary".

Michael H - By the way, GWB never blamed the Clinton administration for any of the problems GWB inherited.

Bush got a lot of mileage from him directly or his surrogates blaming Clinton for "failing to stop Bin Laden", his "suicidal tax increases nearly wrecking the US economy", and of course for the "culture of sleaze and corruption on Wall Street that caused the phony tech bubble"

08/27/08 - 11,502 Barack Obama nominated by his party10/02/08 - 10,482 End of the first fiscal year of Dem. controlled Cong. Dow dropped back to where it was on the first day of Bush’s second term. In one year of Democratic appropriation bills, the Dow Jones erased 4,000 points and moved back to the beginning of Bush's 2nd term.

02/10/09- 7,889 Today’s close.

The DJIA has dropped 44% since 10/01/07, the start of the first fiscal year of the Democrat controlled Congress. The federal deficit began its wild escalation at the same time, as a veto-proof majority in Congress could pass into law any and all spending bills and President Bush was unable to veto those bills because Congress could override his veto.

Barack Obama was nominated on August 27, 2008. On that day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,502.51. The DJIA closed today at 7888.88, a 31% drop in less than 6 months since Obama was nominated.

This recession cannot be blamed on President Bush. It is the Democrat recession brought about by the non-management of Freddie and Fannie, by obscene amounts of deficit spending, and by the market’s wariness of the Obama administration’s so-called stimulus plan.

In fairness, many of the congressional Republicans share part of the blame for behaving like Democrats, adding earmarks to bills, and wanting to be fiscal ‘moderates’.

Choosing to buy a Chevrolet is not "the same thing" as putting a tax on Toyotas.

Of course it is.

Say you have two cars, selling for $20,000 each. One's a Toyota, the other a Chevrolet.

Scenario A: You slap a $20,000 tax on the Toyota. Presto! The Toyota now costs you $20,000 more than the Chevrolet.

Scenario B: You hand out bags of $20,000, with the stipulation that it can only be used to purchase a Chevrolet. Presto! The Toyota now costs you $20,000 more than the Chevrolet.

The only difference is that in the first scenario, the prices paid by consumers are $20,000 vs $40,000. In the latter scenario, the prices paid by consumers are $0 vs $20,000. The effect on trade is the same either way.

Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't learned their lesson: "we have to do something" is the thinking that gave us Smoot-Hawley. Sometimes, the politician's obsession with doing something is precisely what plunges a crisis into a catastrophe.

This bill is a classic demonstration of the "politician's syllogism:"

1. Something must be done.2. This is something.3. Therefore, this must be done.

Well, you know what they say--the market portends the future. The market was already discounting Obama. BTW, the market peaked under Clinton in 2000 (March I believe) before Bush was nominated. Anyway, there's a much better correlation between the Dow and the Fed Chairmanship.

The only difference is that in the first scenario, the prices paid by consumers are $20,000 vs $40,000.

No problem. Consumers can buy either a $20,000 Chevrolet or a $20,000 Toyota. FBI agents have to ride around in Ford Tauruses, however.

Is a Ford built in Mexico more American than a Toyota built in Kentucky?

It's a close question. Both will have significant US content in components and subassemblies. The Toyota will be made of Japanese steel. The $50,000 per job subsidy Kentucky gave Toyota in '85 must have been exhausted by now.

Kentucky assembly-line workers earn higher wages, so they will pump more bucks into the US economy than the Mexicans will pump into the Mexican economy. But the low cost of Mexican labor would also mean that Ford would have more money to pay its engineers, accountants, etc. to spend in this country.

I keep hearing that we're "sticking our children and grandchildren with the bill."

Who says they'll pay it?

If I went to borrow money and told the bank my children and grandchildren were going to assume all my debts so they might as well just lend me the money, the bank would probably say "hell no." How would they know how eager my children and grandchildren are to pay them back? Our children and grandchildren might decide that since they weren't a party to it, it's not really their problem. Hence, I wonder for how much longer banks will lend to the US based on the good credit of our children and grandchildren.

No problem. Consumers can buy either a $20,000 Chevrolet or a $20,000 Toyota. FBI agents have to ride around in Ford Tauruses, however.

Anyone who buys a car is a consumer of cars, dipshit. It doesn't matter if it is a private citizen or an FBI branch office. So in this example the FBI would be receiving a $20,000 price break from the US Congress provided it chose Chevy over Toyota.

Kentucky assembly-line workers earn higher wages, so they will pump more bucks into the US economy than the Mexicans will pump into the Mexican economy.

I have to wonder just how clueless a person has to be before a statement like that starts to make any kind of sense.

Company X hires 20 American workers for $50,000 each. Those workers then spend that $1 million here in the United States.

Company Y hires 200 Mexican workers for $5,000 each. It spends $1 million to by the equivalent value of pesos to pay those workers with. The workers then spend the pesos in Mexico.

At this point, a clueless person says "see? $1 million just left the country". A person who has been paying attention, however, realizes that the entity that sold Company Y a million bucks' worth of pesos now has $1 million in dollars. THAT entity spends its $1 million to hire Americans, buy goods for Americans, etc etc etc. Sure, they might trade the dollars for some other currency, but ultimately those dollars are coming back to America. You can't SPEND a dollar except in the American economy or the economies of those nations that have yoked themselves to ours by opting to use the dollar as their currency of choice (e.g. Panama).

So the long and the short of it is that whether you blow all your hard-earned dollars on American workers or those nasty dirty foreign workers, you're pumping the exact same amount of money into the American economy. The only question is whether you're getting good value for the dollars you spent -- which, if you hire based on nationality instead of quality, you likely aren't.

OBAMA: In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands or in the hands of our legislators than it does with America's workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny just as they always have. For in the end it's businesses -- large and small -- that generate the jobs, provide the salaries, and serve as the foundation on which the American people's lives and dreams depend. All we can do, those of us here in Washington, is to help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow.

Obama, last night:OBAMA: At this particular moment, with the private sector so weakening by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs -- and breaking that cycle is exactly what the plan that's moving through Congress is designed to do.

OBAMA: In the end, the answer to our economic troubles ...All we can do, those of us here in Washington, is to help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow. And that is exactly what the recovery plan I've proposed is intended to do. Thank you.

Try reading the whole speech, and you'll see that Obama's being consistent. Another excerpt:

And they [executives] understand that when it comes to rebuilding our economy, we don't have a moment to spare.

The businesses that are shedding jobs to stay afloat - they cannot afford inaction or delay. The workers who are returning home to tell their husbands and wives and children that they no longer have a job, and all those who live in fear that theirs will be the next job cut - they need help now. They are looking to Washington for action - bold and swift. And that is why I hope to sign an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan into law in the next few weeks.

Cedarford - The DJIA was 10,587.60 on January 20, 2001, the day George W Bush began his first term.

Note, Bush's first FY began 10/1/2001. Clinton's last FY dropped 2,000 pts. Bush's last FY is still dropping, but I think I've shown that drop began with the Democratic Party taking control over the Congress.